Many Estonians travel across the Gulf of Finland to one of two IKEA locations located just outside of Helsinki in Vantaa and Espoo, which are currently the closest locations available for Estonian fans of the store. Source: (Liis Treimann/Postimees/Scanpix)

Swedish furniture retail giant IKEA has not dropped plans to expand in the Baltics and is considering opening stores in Estonia and Latvia.

IKEA opened its first Baltic location in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius in 2013 and its first years of operation have been successful, said Johannes Johannesson, a representative of IKEA's Baltic franchise owner Felit, according to whom the opening of additional stores in Estonia and Latvia remains under consideration, although no decision had yet been made on the matter.

IKEA subsidiary IRI Investments OÜ has acquired an additional 300 hectares of land in Estonia since mid-August, 66 hectares of which consists of forested land. The company currently owns a total of 6,199 hectares of land, 5,366 hectares of which currently remains forested land.

IKEA plans to open an office specializing in the purchase of land, the first such office in the country, in the Southern Estonian city of Tartu before the end of this year. It already has similar offices in the Latvian capital of Riga as well as in Kaunas, Lithuania's second biggest city.

Chairman of the Social Democratic Party (SDE) and former minister of health and labour, Jevgeni Ossinovski expects poverty in Estonia to decrease as an effect of the current government's income tax reform, though the actual impact will become clear only after data is evaluated next year.